Use-conditional licensing of strong negative polarity items

Authors

  • Manfred Sailer

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18148/sub/2022.v26i0.1027

Abstract

Negative polarity items like lift a finger are widely assumed to occur in a subset of contexts in which NPIs like ever are licensed. However, Sedivy (1990) points to contexts in which lift-finger-type NPIs but not ever-type NPIs can occur. The paper adds German rising declaratives to these contexts. It is argued that the relevant contexts have a use-conditional meaning and that lift-finger-type NPIs, in contrast to ever-type NPIs, can be licensed through use-conditional meaning. This idea is formalized as occurrence constraints of NPIs within semantic representations.

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Published

2022-12-22

How to Cite

Sailer, M. (2022). Use-conditional licensing of strong negative polarity items. Proceedings of Sinn Und Bedeutung, 26, 734–752. https://doi.org/10.18148/sub/2022.v26i0.1027

Issue

Vol. 26 (2022): Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung

Section

Articles

License

Copyright (c) 2023 Manfred Sailer

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/